Prudent men lock up their motives, letting familiars have a key to their hearts, as to their garden.

A large, branching, aged oak is perhaps the most venerable of all inanimate objects.

In designing a house and gardens, it is happy when there is an opportunity of maintaining a subordination of parts; the house so luckily place as to exhibit a view of the whole design. I have sometimes thought that there was room for it to resemble a epic or dramatic poem.

Flattery of the verbal kind is gross. In short, applause is of too coarse a nature to be swallowed in the gross, though the extract or tincture be ever so agreeable.

Modesty makes large amends for the pain it gives those who labor under it, by the prejudice it affords every worthy person in their favor.

Deference is the most complicate, the most indirect, and the most elegant of all compliments.

Fashion is a great restraint upon your persons of taste and fancy; who would otherwise in the most trifling instances be able to distinguish themselves from the vulgar.